Railway stations and their urban surroundings are undergoing a ‘renaissance’ for some years now. The movement towards rethinking and renewing these places in cities is based on concerns with sustainability on economical, social and environmental dimensions. In Europe, a great boost to it was given by the High Speed Train (HST) Network implementation. Many projects have been and are being developed. Some of them embrace greater areas then the building itself, transforming both on a requalification effort. To understand how architectural design can improve the performances of these spaces in different cultural and physical contexts, two cities in Europe, Amsterdam in the North and Lisbon in the South, were chosen as case studies. The study was conducted with students at the graduation studio ‘Hybrid buildings’ at the Architecture Faculty of Delft University of Technology, using ‘design research’ and ‘research by design’ as research methods. Results show that design should focus on solving two spatial issues: ‘barrier effect’ and ‘functional mix layout’, as these issues seem to be quite relevant for the success of the station building and its surroundings.